I am starting English Literature with Bear and am quite excited about it. She is not a big fan of English like her siblings are, but I hope to make things more interesting by preparing multi-faceted lessons. I thought long and hard about which book to choose for our first study… then I came across Sounder by William H Armstrong, a book we had done as a family read-aloud when she was much younger.

Sounder is an intensely moving story – simply told so even the young can appreciate it, yet so full of meaning and nuances that an adult cannot help but be drawn into it. The characters just get right down deep into your heart, mind and bones. It is about loyalty and deep abiding love. It is about loss and struggle. Above all, it is about hope.

The story centres around a poor sharecropping black family who struggle to get by. In the winter months, when there is no crop or cash, the father goes hunting with his dog, Sounder. Lately, however, the hunting is poor and he grows more and more desperate by the day. The boy awakens one morning to the smell of ham cooking and for the first time in a long while, the family has a decent meal. There is an undercurrent of tension though, and we realise why soon enough. Three days later, the sheriff and his men barge in and arrest the father for theft. The ever-loyal Sounder tries to protect the father, but is horribly injured in the process and the family are left struggling to cope with this painful loss.

I’ll go into the detailed chapter summaries and theme analysis in future posts, God willing. For now, here are some resources you might find interesting before/while reading the book.

The place and time are not specified in Sounder (a clever technique of the author, but more on that later!) but we can guess that the story is set in the deep South, post slavery, around the beginning of the twentieth century. Slavery was abolished in 1865 and this was to provide equality under the law to the freed slaves. However, the reality was that slavery continued to exist, only in another shape and form. The freed blacks were unskilled and uneducated and too poor to buy land or seeds to farm, so many stayed with their former masters as share croppers. They would farm the land and share the profits with their landlords. With no money for supplies, the farmers would have to use their future crops as collateral and be forced to grow cash crops on their land to pay off debts. They would not be able to grow food and would then need to borrow more money to feed their families. This was, in a strange way, worse than slavery – as sharecroppers, they were in perpetual debt, fear and isolation. In slavery, they at least continued to be fed and had a place to live.

We are reading Leon’s Story by Leon Walter Tillage – a gem I found for less than $1. This is a first-person narrative of life as a sharecropper in the 1940s when lynching and Jim Crow laws were a part of everyday life. Leon had to walk miles to get to school while white kids rode on buses… he had urine thrown at him, was chased by dogs and had to endure his father’s killing by white people. Still, it is a story of hope and perseverance.

My kids and I are huge fans of award-winning writer, Linda Sue Park. Her book, A Single Shard, is one of our favourites. It is a vividly told tale set in Ch’ul’po, a potter’s village, in 12th-century Korea. The protagonist is 10-year-old orphan, named for a mushroom that grows “without benefit of parent-seed”. He was raised by Crane-man (he has a shrivelled leg). These two outcasts make their home under the bridge and scavenge for food, refusing to beg or steal. When he accidentally breaks a pot belonging to Min, a master potter, he has to work off his debt and this sets off a series of change. I won’t say more except that if you like a story about loyalty, courage and love, then this is the book for you.

We’ve also enjoyed Linda Sue Park’s other books. I strongly believe in using living books and hers are wonderful for History and Geography. See Saw Girl tells of Jade, a girl of good social standing in 17th-century Korea who longs to see the world. Women then did not leave home (LITERALLY) till they married and then, did not ever step outside the walls of their marriage home. The Kite Fighters is about two brothers Kee-Sup and Young-Sup in 15th-century Korea. Young-Sup, the younger, often feels envious of his older brother, who seems to be favoured simply because he is the first-born. When the young king enlists their help for a kite competition, they learn to complement each other and understand each other better.

When My Name Was Keoko takes us to a more contemporary time – 1940 to the end of the second World War. Korea has been occupied by the Japanese since 1910 and their oppressive rulers are determined to erase the Korean identity and culture through propoganda and outright force. We see the struggle of the Korean people through Sun-hee (who is forced to take on the Japanese name Keoko) and her brother Tae-yul who narrate the story in turns. Each of the characters we meet show courage in their own unique way. We learn not just about role of Japan in WW2 but also what happens to Korea after it regains its independence. What makes this story even more meaningful is that the characters were inspired by true stories told by the author’s friends and family.

Korean paper doll – lots more paperdolls from all over the world available for download at Education.Com